


A Tree That's Carved Out With Your Name

by MelodyMayhew



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Temporary Character Death, immortal idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25396153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodyMayhew/pseuds/MelodyMayhew
Summary: They kill each other every day, until they finally stop to make peace.Then they start killing each other again.It goes like this --
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 61
Kudos: 906





	A Tree That's Carved Out With Your Name

They kill each other every day, until they stop and finally peace.

Then they start killing each other again.

It goes like this --

A curved blade is thick in Nicolò’s belly, and Nicolò is watching his insides ooze around the metal. He has watched this enough times that curiosity has begun to outweigh the pain. He's always has a student’s eye, and watching the way his flesh wiggles waxy tendrils around the blade, trying to close the wound, is fascinating.

Disgusting, but fascinating.

Above him, the man grunts, shoves the blade further in, and twists.

This hurts enough to snuff Nicolò’s curiosity, and he wails.

He makes eye contact with the man pinning him down, and for a moment he sees something flash behind his eyes -- pity? grief? respect?

“Per favore,” Nicolò says to him, for the first time.

  
The man roars, pulls out the scimitar - and several other vital pieces of Nicolò - and Nicolò promptly dies.

When he wakes up, the man is wiping bits of Nicolò off his scimitar. He is also doing it on the outside of Nicolò’s right thigh, which he finds both rude and oddly genteel. 

Nicolò blinks, and a hand appears in view. He squints at the bearded man, his face haloed by the sun and making it impossible to discern his features.

The man waves his hand and grunts. Nicolò takes it, and suddenly finds himself on his feet.

( _ It’s not as though he didn’t know this man was strong, but the bright weightlessness of feeling his entire body lifted makes his stomach flip. He chooses not to examine the sensation. _ )

The man keeps a grip on his hand and locks eyes with him.

“Yusuf.”

He smacks his left palm to his chest.

“ _ Yusuf _ .”

Nicolò peers at him. There is neither kindness nor anger in Yusuf’s eyes. But there is something. He cannot quite name it.

Nicolò squeezes Yusuf’s hand.

“Nicolò.” He mirrors the gesture, left palm to his own breastbone. “Sono Nicolò.”

Yusuf nods. “Nicolò.” He drops his hand, sheathes his sword, and turns on his shoulder.

“Vieni, Nicolò.”

Nicolò follows.

<< >>

For several months, they travel along the coast. Yusuf is the more natural linguist of the two, and quickly picks up Nicolò’s native tongue. Nicolò is fascinated by how inquisitive Yusuf’s mind is. Once the barrier of enmity between them lifts, Yusuf disarms him with instant familiarity. Within a day he is laughing loudly and clapping Nicolò on the back, sharing his pack of supplies and breaking bread.

Within a week he is  _ winking _ at him.

Yusuf, he finds, is a very strange man. But, Nicolò is grateful to have an enjoyable traveling companion. If only by virtue of the fact that he is the only other soul on God’s earth with the same affliction as him.

They don’t talk about The Affliction, at first. They speak almost exclusively of the past, of who they were before the war. Before the cruelty, and the blood.

Nicolò thinks, had God and an ocean not separated them, they could have been great friends.

Then they start killing each other again.

It begins one night by accident. Nicolò is sharpening his sword. Yusuf sneaks behind him, presumably to tickle him, because that is  _ also _ something he does from time to time (“to sharpen your wits”, Yusuf says gleefully). Before either of them know it, Nicolò’s longsword is wedged halfway into Yusuf’s side.

Nicolò’s eyes go wide with panic.

“Sorry! Sorry!” he says in stilted Arabic. He stares at the wound, at Yusuf’s blood seeping out slowly like jam. He knows when he looks up Yusuf will have murder in his eyes and this whole thing will start over again.

Except---

Yusuf is laughing. He is laughing silently, tears trickling from the corners of his eyes. He grabs two hands around Nicolò’s longsword and pulls it out.

“You idiot,” he says, still laughing. “You stabbed me.”

Yusuf pouts a little as his flesh sews itself closed. “I thought we were getting along.”

“I am so sorry, Yusuf. You surprised me, I did not mean--”

“If you wanted me to stop tickling you, you need only have asked.”

Nicolò blushes, stops babbling, and lays down his sword.

“You are my friend,” he says quietly, “I hurt you.”

“You cannot hurt me,” Yusuf says bluntly, “you already know this.”

“Still,” Nicolò says. He waves a hand at the tear in Yusuf’s clothing, the bare healed skin. “It is not nice.”

Yusuf squints one eye half closed, raising an eyebrow.

“But,” he says thoughtfully, “it could be useful.”

He divests himself of his tunic and spreads open his arms. “Stab me again.”

“What?” Nicolò is appalled. “No! Absolutely not!”

“Think,” Yusuf says, “do you not heal faster every time you are wounded? We could be doing each other a favour!”

He cups a hand under his chin and rubs at his beard.

“Or,” he says thoughtfully, “we could learn the extent of our gifts.”

And that is how Nicolò finds himself, two weeks later, elbow deep in Yusuf’s stomach cavity as he removes a scoop of intestine.

Yusuf gurgles, foamy red spittle leaking from his mouth. He looks down at the carnage and chuckles, then says something in Arabic that Nicolò hasn’t learnt yet.

(A thousand years later, Yusuf tells him that the modern translation equated to “ _ holy shit that’s fucking awesome _ ”).

Three seconds after that, the last bubble of spit escapes Yusuf’s mouth and he dies. Nicolò vomits. Twice.

He is considerate enough  _ not _ to do it into Yusuf’s empty carcass.

Before he can finish wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, Yusuf gasps and pushes himself to his elbows, and the two of them watch his liver re-grow itself.

Nicolò throws up again, at this point just empty retching. He coughs and coughs into the dry sand until his stomach aches, and then he thinks of Yusuf’s stomach removed - by his own hands - and retches again.

“I’m not letting you try that on me,” Nicolò declares.

“Fair enough,” Yusuf replies. “I would not recommend it.” He pushes himself up into a sitting position, fingering at the little spirals of skin braiding themselves over his lower belly.

“But it was fascinating to watch.”

Nicolò moans. “Next experiment, no cutting.”

<<>>

Instead, they drown each other. It is not very exciting.

A month later, Yusuf poisons him with berries from an unknown scrubby plant. Nicolò returns the favor by suffocating him. They mutually attempt starvation, although it takes two tries to actually go through with it and let themselves die.

They expose themselves to the sun and elements, and let the sand consume their bodies. They burn their hands and feet, giggling over the campfire. They even scale a cliff and try throwing themselves from great heights ( _ They only do this a couple of times, it really hurts _ ).

Nicolò finds himself starting to enjoy their games. He revels in this newfound invincibility, shared with only one other person, and he becomes convinced that God must have brought them together for a great purpose. He finds himself glad that the person God chose was Yusuf.

  
And if, between their murderous excursions, he finds himself staring more and more at the line of Yusuf’s neck, at the flex of his frankly distractingly large hands, well… these are thoughts he is long familiar with, thoughts that priesthood could not flay out of him. He is used to burying those desires deep under his skin, and he is certain Yusuf would not appreciate his voicing of him.

Still, when Yusuf winks at him, and his eyes linger a little too long, he wonders.

He wonders.

<<>>

Things change in Malta.

They have killed each other enough now that there are few experiments left, and Yusuf expresses little interest in repeating old ones. They have tried almost every variation, even returning to the use of their blades as they dared to hack off each other’s limbs.

( _ Yusuf insisted on going first for this one. “You need two hands for your great clunky sword,” he said. “I can fight with one.” “Such a gentleman”, “Nicolò had replied, and promptly cut his hand off _ .)

But Nicolò has noticed something different in the line of Yusuf’s shoulders. He no longer lights up at the thought of showing off their great immortality, and his eyes have become sallow, the sockets around them shaded and grey.

Nicolò does not like this Yusuf. This Yusuf is distant, and winks less. He never tickles him. Nicolò thinks he must be bored. Unsatisfied with this life, maybe even with him.

  
Until now it has not occurred to Nicolò that Yusuf could just  _ leave _ him, and the realization punches him in the gut. Without Yusuf he would be alone, and that -- actually that doesn’t bother him. He has been alone before. He was alone most of his life, and it suited him pleasantly.

What bothers him is being  _ without _ Yusuf - what bothers him further is Yusuf wanting to be without him. He had just assumed that being simultaneously borne into this life, they would continue it side-by-side until Heaven finally called for them. And then they would depart together, as God would will it.

Living long years, stretches of unfathomable time, without Yusuf, seems like the most unbearable pain. Worse than burning, drowning, and all the eviscerations put together. He tries to imagine life without Yusuf’s smile, without his smudged charcoal fingers, without his warm eyes, without the careful way he touches him when they make their way around each other at campfire.

He tries to think about a long life without their nightly conversations about art and God and nights lit up by Yusuf’s laughter. He imagines Yusuf never winking at him again, and he feels sick.

  
And this is how Nicolò finds himself suggesting that Yusuf hang him.

Yusuf stares at him agape.

“You want me to what?”

“Hang me,” Nicolò says cheerfully. Perhaps a little too cheerfully, but he is so desperate to lift Yusuf’s spirits again. “We haven’t tried that, not once.”

“You choked me to death in Jerusalem,” Yusuf says gruffly. “Same thing.”

_ So he  _ is _ bored _ , Nicolò thinks, and becomes desperate.

“But it isn’t! Think, none of us have  _ left _ the other to hang. Do we just continue to die over and over? It would be useful to know.”

Yusuf shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“But why,” Nicolò pleads, “there’s still so much to--”

“I said  _ no _ ,” Yusuf says sharply. He stands from where he had been crouched at the campfire and brushes at his knees. “Now go to sleep.”

Nicolò crumples, miserable. He had hoped this would work, but had only succeeded in driving Yusuf further away. Panic claws at his throat. 

“Yusuf,” he chokes out. Yusuf stops still, one hand at the flap of his tent. “I’m sorry.”

Yusuf’s head twitches just a little to the side, and then the line of his shoulders soften. He turns back, his eyes unbearably sad. 

“Never apologize to me, Nicolò. I am sorry I lost my temper.” He reaches an arm out in earnest. “Good night.”

Nicolò coils easily to his feet and takes Yusuf’s arm, although the gesture seems stiffer than normal. One side of Yusuf’s mouth is turned downwards, and Nicolò fingers itch to wipe his frown smooth.

“Good night,” Nicolò replies, although the words tastes like bitter root in his mouth. He feels like he is saying them for the last time.

He watches as Yusuf disappears behind the canvas, watches as his lean form turns to blow out the oil lamp, watches the darkness blotch out the bright spot where Yusuf had been standing moments ago, and is consumed with desperation.

He takes the rope they use to tie their horse - when they have one - and marches into the dark.

<<>>

  
He wakes for the third time, choking, scrabbling his hands at his neck. The branch he had hung himself from was sturdy - too sturdy - and he finds himself really wishing he wasn’t the kind of man that thought with action first. This, Nicolò concedes, was a very stupid plan.

When he had walked to the olive tree and looped the rope around it, he had thought it would be simple enough. Hang himself and then report his findings. Share a new adventure with Yusuf; rekindle his interest and continue anew.

What he hadn’t accounted for was how absolutely terrible hanging feels like. And unfortunately, he was right in his assumption that with this method of death, one does not truly die. At least not after the first time. His windpipe becomes too used to crushing and learns to hasten its healing. The vertebrae in his neck snap and re-fuse on a neverending loop. The skin of his face becomes hot and tight like a drum. And before he can gain breath to try and free himself, the cycle starts over.

Nicolò cries softly to himself. This is why Yusuf is leaving you, he tells himself. Because you are a stupid fellow who hangs himself in the middle of the night without a knife to cut himself down.

“Yusuf,” he whispers for the second time that night, “I am sorry.”

Even though his words are barely given breath, the moment he says them a distant light smudges into existence.

Barely thirty seconds later Yusuf is at his side, eyes wild with fury. When he sees Nicolò, sputtering, his legs kicking, the anger melts from his eyes into quicksilver terror.

“Nicolò!”

In one step he has his arms tight about Nicolò’s thighs and is pushing him up, up toward sweet air. Yusuf’s face is mashed uncomfortably against his groin, and Nicolò really wishes he could even think about enjoying the sensation, but he is too caught up in the ambrosia of breath in his lungs, and he takes in gulp after fresh gulp.

As the fog clears in his brain, he is able to finally loosen the noose at his neck, and he lets it slacken and slips his head free as Yusuf settles him back to the ground.

  
For a moment they stay there, Yusuf’s arms now gripped around his waist, Nicolò’s hands digging in to Yusuf’s shoulders. They breathe together, harshly, foreheads bent so that the lines of their noses press together.

It is shockingly, startling intimate, and also so shockingly natural that Nicolò cannot help but smile. Then his eyes meet Yusuf’s and there is nothing written on them except pain, and Nicolò jolts backwards.

“No more, Nicolò,” Yusuf says. “No more.”

And then the press of his body is gone, Nicolò is cold, and Yusuf has disappeared back into the night.

Nicolò swallows, rubs at his neck.

He thinks of the warmth of Yusuf’s breast tight with his, the way he almost tasted his breath, and thinks that maybe if he does not walk after Yusuf right now he may spend the rest of eternity missing something even more vital than air.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò calls into the darkness, “stop, please!”

“No!” A petulant voice shouts out in reply. “Leave me be!”

“I will not!” Nicolò says. “Not until you tell me!”

“Tell you what?”

  
“Why you have been so melancholy these many weeks,” Nicolò says honestly, “why you refuse to kill me anymore. You must tell you what I have done to lose your trust.”

The sudden silence cuts across the night. Yusuf has stopped walking, has maybe stopped breathing.

“Is that what you think?” A voice says from behind him. Of course he’s back to sneaking, it’s what he  _ does _ . “You think I do not trust you?”

There is a cold dismay in Yusuf’s voice that Nicolò has never heard before. He does not turn around.

  
“I can think of no other reason why your mood has so greatly changed. You used to talk with me long into the night and now you barely look at me. I can think only that it is because you have grown bored. You do not want me as a companion.”

Yusuf shifts behind him.

“That is true,” he says quietly. “I do not want you as a companion.”

The words hurt more than any death ever could.

“Oh.” He blinks out two thick lines of tears. “I see.”

  
He swallows the sharp stone of grief in his throat. “I had thought you-- that we--”

“Thought what?” 

The words scramble in Nicolò’s mind, trying to fit together into sentiment that he can make pretty for Yusuf. Words that will not make him a blasphemer.

“That we were brothers,” Nicolò settles on, although it doesn’t quite fit. “That we would always be --”

_ Together _ , is how he wants that thought to finish, but Yusuf has spun him around roughly. There is a bare sliver of moonlight, enough for Nicolò to see the glint of his eyes only. He can’t quite read it, there is something new there.

“I am  _ not _ ,” Yusuf snarls, “your  _ brother _ .”

And then Yusuf  _ kisses _ him, rough, and uncoordinated, Nicolò’s shoulders fisted in his hands. He half-misses Nicolò’s mouth but the intent is clear. Just as abruptly, he lets him go with a shove, and stalks away again.

Nicolò’s fingertips press thoughtfully at his lips. For the first time since he was sixteen, he takes the lord’s name in vain.

  
Then he runs.

“If I am not your brother, or your companion, what am I?”

“Friend?” he tries, and receives no reply. Yusuf does not break stride.

“Enemy? No, it has been years since that. What else?” He steels himself.

“Your husband, then?”

  
Nicolò holds his breath, as though he hadn’t been wanting for it mere minutes ago. Yusuf spins on his heels.

But instead of catching him up in his arms, like Nicolò expects, Yusuf bears down on him, pushing him into the dirt.

“You mock me,” he says. He sounds wrecked and lost and  _ furious _ . “You mock the love I have for you when it causes me nothing but pain.”

He bunches up the front of Nicolò’s nightclothes.

“Do you know what torture it is, to see the man I love beg me to end his life over and over and over again? To watch the light dim from your eyes - the only eyes in the world that I give favour to - and not know if you will return? I can no longer watch you die, Nicolò. It has become an agony and yet still you beg me to do it. Why do you torment me?”

Nicolò wonders if he can die from his heart hammering out of his chest. He thinks it is very likely. Yusuf is crouched above him, teeth gritted, face splashed with grief.

“I would love you as no man has loved anyone. I would follow you to the end of my days and sing you the love songs of my ancestors, I would wrap you in soft linens and feed you figs from my fingers until you were fat and sated. I would worship you with my body and heart because you  _ are  _ God to me, Nicolò, you are every prayer I have ever said and you  _ do not care _ . I can no longer abide it.”

He releases Nicolò, panting.

“I will leave at first light.”

“You will do no such thing.”

Nicolò has already sprung to his feet.

A thousand years from now, the words ‘incurable romantic’ will roll from Nicky’s tongue as easy as water, but here, this night, they have not yet learned the word for romance, and so Nicolò simply says, “You speak with your heart,” and leans forward to kiss him.

This time, the kiss lands true. Yusuf crumples instantly into him, a wet sound of relief echoing from the back of his throat. Nicolò kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him. He kisses the tears from Yusuf’s eyes, kisses the heat from his brow. He kisses each corner of his crooked mouth, the jut of his chin.

“You foolish man,” he whispers against Yusuf’s lips, “how could you not know?”

  
He feels Yusuf’s hopeful smile pressed into his mouth. “Know what?” he asks.

Nicolò flushes. “I am not as versed in words as you, my Yusuf. But you have always been  _ my _ Yusuf. Where your destiny goes, mine follows.”

“And your heart?” Yusuf presses on, his nose nudging Nicolò’s cheek. Nicolò smiles. He takes Yusuf’s left hand and places it over his own chest.

“I think you mean  _ your _ heart,” Nicolò replies, honest and plain.

He turns his head again to kiss Yusuf, long and deep. Yusuf’s great, beautiful hands tremble at his face, smoothing the sides of his cheeks, the nape of his neck. Nicolò cannot help but grin halfway into the kiss, beaming with pure giddy joy. He draws for breath, looking into Yusuf’s eyes. They are sparkling, radiant and renewed. He squeezes Yusuf’s hand, still over his heart, and  _ winks _ .

  
“But we can always cut it out and check.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This was barely proofread and word-vomited in a couple of hours but it was a blast to write just because I love these fuckers so much.
> 
> Also, I'm generally used to writing script and dialogue, so there has been shameful research and I'm self-admittedly rusty. But these bastards wouldn't shut up until I got it out.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
